Just about everyone who gets the privilege of hearing The Harpies (and is still compos mentis enough afterwards to comment on it) has noted how Slipknot would swiftly have to run home and change their slacks if they ever came within earshot of them. If your correspondent didn’t have one finger prized onto the ‘repeat’ button and wasn’t busy baying for more aural carnage, I’d be inclined to agree. If we’re gonna be all loose-jawed and glassy-eyed about this, their new single ‘Waitless’ is rather intense (so intense, in fact, that the radio edit makes the original song longer in order to take the edge off of it).

Of course there’s all the usual factors here - the pounding bass drum frenzies, sense-obliterating guitar shred-work, all done with more fervour and aggression than most of their contemporaries can muster. That’d be enough to make this a good, dirty, mosh-rousing tune. But it’s undoubtedly the pleasantly-named Nicky Honey and her unpleasantly-disconcerting vocal chords that give this song the bite to be savoured and make it stand head, shoulders and however many piercings are in each over most of the current competition.

For one moment she’s pondering melodically about, y’know, issues and shit, before unleashing this… thing, this sheer white-hot stabbing noise-ball of barking and shrieking that is enough to make your soul quiver, your eyeballs itch and your mind envisage her coughing up her entire digestive system. Yep. It’s fucking great.

The B-side ‘Stay Down’, meanwhile, is pretty much four minutes of ghostly guitar and sombre chanting. It appears to be a good way of calming you down after all that rawking excitement, and not least a way of proving that this lot can be affecting when they get all atmospheric on your arse as well as when they’re busy trying to rip a new hole into it. And, yes, they do seem to be a darnsight better than the ‘Knot. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I need a lie down…